Trip to Opel factory
On 7th April, the technology workshop visited the Opel factory in Bochum.
The trip started with a brief presentation of the factory’s history. Then they entered the production hall with a guide who explained how the machines work.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to make a presentation in English, thus one of the Belgian teacher had to translate everything. She tried to do her best but obviously she didn’t know the translation of some specific words.
The guide told the group that the factory produces 710 cars per day. The mill started its production in 1962. There are other factories all over the Europe like in England, Russia, Spain and Belgium. The Belgian factory was closed in the end of 2010 because the production wasn’t profitable.
The guide explained that there are several phases during the construction of a car and that there are a lot of people working. The factory is huge and it extends for 1 square kilometre. Most of the workers are male: only 4.2% of them are female and obviously that’s a pity because even women are able to build a car.
Referring to our topic “Crisis? What Crisis?”, there was a discussion about the problems of Opel. An employee of Opel explained that there still one thousand of workers who won't bet needed in the Opel factory.
All the members of the workshop were really interested in the topic of the discussion and they participated. They asked a lot of questions and they were satisfied with the answers they got.
This workshop is closely related to our main topic and that’s a great thing, but sometimes it can be too long because people had to listen to the guide for hours.
However, the trip was very interesting and everybody enjoyed the time there.
Elisa & Eva